The Life And Myth Of Charmian Clift
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
She was a sun-drenched bohemian, a brilliant essayist, and one of Australia's most beloved writers — and yet the full, complex truth of Charmian Clift's life remained tantalizingly out of reach until now. The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift chronicles the remarkable story of a woman who abandoned the conservative constraints of postwar Australia to forge an extraordinary life on the Greek islands of Kalymnos and Hydra with her husband, novelist George Johnston, raising a family in poverty and passion while producing some of the finest prose of her generation. Nadia Wheatley presents a sweeping, meticulously researched portrait of a woman perpetually caught between her public persona and her private anguish, between artistic ambition and domestic sacrifice. Wheatley's biography is as much a cultural history of mid-twentieth-century literary bohemia as it is the story of one woman's singular and tragic arc. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, she constructs a vivid world of expatriate writers, sun-bleached island life, and the brutal economics of literary ambition, illuminating how the myth of Clift — radiant, free-spirited, effortlessly talented — was both a product of her own careful self-creation and a cage that ultimately confined her. For anyone who has ever wondered what it truly costs to live a life devoted to art and honesty, this biography offers a haunting and unforgettable answer.
Author: Nadia Wheatley
Format: Hardback
Published: 2001, Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
She was a sun-drenched bohemian, a brilliant essayist, and one of Australia's most beloved writers — and yet the full, complex truth of Charmian Clift's life remained tantalizingly out of reach until now. The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift chronicles the remarkable story of a woman who abandoned the conservative constraints of postwar Australia to forge an extraordinary life on the Greek islands of Kalymnos and Hydra with her husband, novelist George Johnston, raising a family in poverty and passion while producing some of the finest prose of her generation. Nadia Wheatley presents a sweeping, meticulously researched portrait of a woman perpetually caught between her public persona and her private anguish, between artistic ambition and domestic sacrifice. Wheatley's biography is as much a cultural history of mid-twentieth-century literary bohemia as it is the story of one woman's singular and tragic arc. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, she constructs a vivid world of expatriate writers, sun-bleached island life, and the brutal economics of literary ambition, illuminating how the myth of Clift — radiant, free-spirited, effortlessly talented — was both a product of her own careful self-creation and a cage that ultimately confined her. For anyone who has ever wondered what it truly costs to live a life devoted to art and honesty, this biography offers a haunting and unforgettable answer.